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Belonging & Behavior, Part 2

Last week, I unraveled my thoughts about both OT and NT characters seeing (or missing) their chance to simply belong to God – be chosen, be beloved, be enough in His sight, be His. 

Ezekiel said yes; the masses of Israelites said no.

Mary said yes; most of the Pharisees said no. 

This is how I am challenged right now and here is what I pray becomes crystal clear in the Belonging & Behavior connection training book, which is an adoptive parenting book with a whole other layer of truth built in~

God is inviting people into His family and that belonging piece is not just a step up into a more important level (like how we act). No, belonging is our roots, it’s our trunk, it’s our branches! It’s almost everything. It’s who we are! It’s how we survive in this environment! He knew we would need, more than we realize, to be in the family with Him! And when it really has soaked in that this fellowship is real, that this goodness is true, that we have a Provider, Protector, Father, Counselor, Ever-Present-Help in times of trouble, then…we begin to reflect the good heart with which we have been communing. 

His family has certain ways they act because they have been dwelling with perfect Love. Just like in any family, the members branch out and look different, but in God’s family, all those differences are still going to point to the same beautiful, good, true things about who He is and what He does. Their behavior is the fruit. The bearing of fruit, the harvest, never comes before the planting season! This is where we go wrong when we focus on the rules of what we are doing or not doing, rather than focus on knowing Jesus personally and dwelling with Him in a relationship. 

Sometimes we need to stop and see that our behavior problems are really belonging problems…and oh how the Father would love to help us with that! Soaking in His love, we are changed. 

Like I said last week, it is repeated dozens of times in the OT that God was saying: “I want you to be My people and I want to be Your God.” And God went on multiple times to also say the following, which I think is absolutely worth mentioning…these are Family Basics, per Yahweh. This is how we act when we are His.

We will:

•Be generous to the poor and foreigner, whether that is spiritually, emotionally, or financially poor. They are in our midst for a reason. This shows we know the “Family of God” basics; this shows we know we lack nothing and can give what He gives us away without fear of lack. Giving shows we know our roots, deep in abundance with Father God. 

•Keep the Sabbath, meaning rest and don’t do what you normally do. Don’t catch up or get ahead. Literally, cease! Regroup. Recharge. Give your mouth a break from idle words. Meditate on the beauty of the Lord. Give over to Him all that makes you strive, signifying a release of all our own man-made goodness and accomplishment. This shows we trust our Provider and that we put Him above our abilities, our reputation, and anything we could build for ourselves. Resting shows that who we are comes from the work of Jesus, not us, and that the world will go on without us. It’s more than sacrifice, it is a practice of humility. 

•Know He alone is God. Regardless of past hurts or fears, He is on the throne. He is sovereign. His Word is true. He alone is God, meaning we are not…that takes the load off responsibilities that were never ours in the first place. 

Lord,

We are a tribe that longs to know You and look more like You, our Leader, our Author, our Father. But we are in an atmosphere that makes it feel so complicated as we parent, work long hours, pay for things, and deal with things that don’t seem to matter much in the Kingdom! Show us how to live here, as Yours.

Amen.

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Belonging & Behavior, Part 1

It has always been a dream of mine to write and publish a book, and last week, I crossed the finish line of that idea; thank You, Jesus! I had been working off and on for four years to write a book about how adoptive families connect, based on our experience and what we learned – both before our adoptions, and during the “hot mess” years! Ultimately, we learned a lot that paralleled the love of Father God and His invitation into the Family!

Lately I have been reading Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a prophet, whom God called to do many crazy things to show the Israelites who He was and what He was after. When you read Ezekiel, you see that while God brings new and creative visual lessons to His people, the bottom line of all these lessons is the same. Yes, He was echoing through these books that the people were horrible, belligerent sinners. But why didn’t the sin of the Philistines or the Edomites cause Him the same grief? Because God’s priority was His family: “I want you to know that I am God, your God, and that you are a people, My people.” He was upset about their behavior, He called out certain actions – but He just kept saying in all of His decisions: “Then they will know I am God.” It reminds me of Ps. 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God…”

Again, and again, and again. In Isaiah, or Lamentations, or Exodus, or just about all the Samuels, Kings, and Chronicles, God is warning: I will punish you to bring you back to Me and teach you what you really need; I will make you see that I had a special position and place for you which was the best plan for you; I will make you sorry so that you will understand and never stray again! And eventually, He lets a great number of them die, be exiled, etc, never to return to their promised land because of their consistent choice to sin and not be His people. While He left a remnant, as He promised, His warnings did come to pass. 

And in all this, the thing that keeps standing out to me is that, in my opinion and from what I can see across the Word, God’s greatest desire was simply: “a people”. A people that belonged to Him. A people that were proud to be His. A people that reflected His heart and His ways. A people who enjoyed knowing that He was God and happy they did not have to be. A people at peace, knowing that while they lived in a foreign dark world, they had a secret identity and connection to the King of a much better and more important Kingdom.

And yet that was the one thing they did not do, the one thing they refused to be. The Jews rejected this belonging. 

In the New Testament, we see that Pharisees and Sadducees were finally some Jews that had their acts together. They weren’t going to hurt the reputation of their God! They weren’t going to get punishments like their ancestors had, no way! They finally had a grip on what God wanted out of them…or so they thought. Unfortunately, they had it backwards! It was a different version of the story, but still sin and still separation from God. They couldn’t care less if they belonged to God; they really just belonged to their law books, their religion, and their self-righteousness. They had their act, and I believe they believed it was enough, I really do. But they were missing the fact that God wanted their behavior to flow from their joy of belonging to Him – in humble awe calling Him their God, in humble awe praising Him for saving them because they couldn’t possibly be near Him without mercy, and in humble awe obeying Him through serving others. This is not what the leaders in Jesus’ time on earth lived like. That’s why He judged them more harshly than the drunks and the prostitutes.

The religious leaders rewrote the story of what God wanted from them…or at least they tried to.

We make things complicated sometimes.

The question to be asking is, truly, am I thinking and living and enjoying Him…like a child of God, beloved and secure?

Lord,

Help us recognize the value, the priceless value, of belonging to You, of being Yours! Lord, the gift and the beauty of this…Thank You.

amen.

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I’m 42

Much like Amy Grant when she wrote her book (which I wrote about last week), Jen Hatmaker is writing this book in her early 40s. Bingo! I’m 42. Words from women my age truly are golden when they are from ladies who have lived their lives with honesty and humility, love and equality, striving to honor and be like Jesus, and creatively serving others.

This copy I hold of Jen’s book, Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, has many dog-eared pages, and I want to process – briefly – just a few of the ones that shine brightest to me at this stage of my life.

The entire chapter of “I Am Strong in My Body” is so so so so important. I wish every girl to read this chapter, even if some parts come off too strongly for me personally. She talks about how heartbreaking it is to see women and girls not love and appreciate their bodies, but instead let the media and world tell them what they should obsess over and change and belittle and despise. How sad to think our lives are less than they could be because our thighs are more than we think they should be. She writes: What if we talked about our bodies as “she” and “her” instead of “it”? She lists the millions of miraculous things our bodies do and have done and will do. We have believed a lie when we believe something about our inches and pounds is holding us back from joy and worthiness. “She” has been through it, and “she” is a blessing!

In her chapter, “I Need More Connection”, I see how – although I am an introvert – how I need community in my life now more than ever. Like with homeschooling, songwriting, recording, running, nutrition, even in reading a book sometimes…I do not want to do it alone, anymore, ever again, please don’t make me. Pulling people together boosts EVERYTHING! I also love her encouragement to make community happen wherever you are. What is one of your favorite things? Ask around until you find others who are into that, and see if your passion and productivity doesn’t grow. Love it!

I’ve been realizing lately that I tend to be a people-pleaser. I have cared about being known as a certain type of person: Responsible, talented, deep, thorough, but also fun. (I kind of want to roll my eyes at myself right now! That’s kind of a lot to ask!) In Jen’s chapter, “I Want to Choose My Yeses”, she helps readers see why we say yes sometimes (when we really didn’t want to). Giving a clear no is very respectable. People who can’t handle that usually have some drama they are working out in their own lives. Times change, seasons change. We don’t have to be the Homeschool Co-op Mom for 20 years; we don’t have to be the secretary to someone forever either, even if they would be “lost without us”. We can say no to some things in order to say yes to others, and we can strategically and respectively make our move, without guilt, as we seek the Lord and undo some social tangles we have allowed ourselves into.

Right now, I’ll be honest. I feel like my time of homeschooling may be coming to a close in the next couple of years. I feel like my dream of being a counselor someday is actually being replaced with the desire to continue more in my music and writing. I feel like the Beachbody exercise and wellness ideas have been such a life changing thing for me that I want to continue coaching groups of ladies because we do so much more than just manage food and sweat. I feel like Jack, my husband of almost 20 years, is taking exciting steps to find healing and do ministry in the great outdoors, and I want to gravitate toward that for many reasons. My quiet natured self is just wanting to scream with the joy of this vision. My second half of life is going to be good, even though I know that overwhelming, emotional, unnavigated territory awaits! I have teenagers. My parents are in their 60s. Enough said.

The “1” in me wants everything to be neat and tidy.

It’s not.

It’s not going to be.

My journals have so many beautiful revelations, but I pray my best friends will burn them before anyone reads them, because for every pure and lovely thing written in those thousands of pages there are a dozen ridiculous, rude, and pitiful entries.

It’s too late. I can’t go back and live a straight line.

And it’s okay. It’s not going to get any straighter from this point on.

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Learning to Trust

As I have talked about to pretty much anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me this summer, God is doing a major work in my life and that work is all about learning to trust Him!

 

First, I had to find out that I didn’t really trust Him…

then I had to find out why not…

then I had to seek His Word to reconcile how I felt with what I say I believe…

and now I get up every morning to face the situations that will drive those truths deeper and deeper into my inner being.

 

This is what is on my mind as I think about a situation I am having to face right now! I want to share this because I think it’s a good example of how truth can meet us in the middle of suffering.

Last year around this time, I had to have a medical procedure. I am not a wimp at all when it comes to pain, but this was a bad situation, and it took me awhile to get over it emotionally and physically. Yesterday, I went back to the surgeon and I have to have another similar surgery. It isn’t going to be in an emergency setting like last time, so I am grateful for that, but still, I’m really having a hard time accepting that I have to “go there” again. All of a sudden, I physically feel tired and like I want to cry all the time. It’s really affecting me!

 

But part of what I’ve been learning in this “trust process” is that a large amount of the pain we feel in suffering is our fear of it. This is the part that gets me pretty fired up. See, the enemy wants us to get caught up in being angry at God when we suffer, but the truth is that fear comes from Satan and it does not have to be a part of our suffering experience.  The part of suffering we can have power over, the part of suffering God is cheering us on to take power over, is here in our inner man. A spirit of fear does not have to accompany us in the trials of life; we can resist against his lies, and walk in freedom in the middle of the circumstance.

So that’s the part of suffering we can do battle against…but I believe there’s also a part of suffering we are encouraged to accept.

A large part of the pain we feel in suffering is our rejection of it.

Think of Job. Think of Jesus. Think of John. Think of Paul. They all understood that their suffering was allowed very purposefully and strategically by God, and while they were real and honest about the pain, they accepted it. They took the cup and drank it. They weren’t shocked by it, and they didn’t act like they were somehow too good for it. They wanted their suffering to achieve every high purpose God had in mind for it.

Amen?

Amen.